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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Curmudgeon's Corner: Marketing or False Advertising?

Welcome back Shawn Keenan, the author of both The Intern's Tale
and The Buried Covenant. If you haven't read these books, you should. He
has graciously agreed to guest post on Curmudgeon's Corner-- something I
hope I'll badger him into doing again in the future. Don't forget to stop by his great blog, Errant Author at http://errantauthor.blogspot.com

I’m not really sure what the laws on the books are about
false advertising.As a rule of thumb, I
don’t think companies are allowed to make claims that aren’t factually true to
induce you to buy a product.But what
about just out-and-out lying?Politicians do it all the time, and we elect (or buy) them to run our
country and spend our tax dollars.So I
guess there’s a fine line.

I watched the movie Five
Year Engagement last night staring that guy from the Muppet movie and that
British chick from lots of stuff who may have dated Matt Damon at one
time.The movie was good and I recommend
it.This was the movie that ran that
commercial so frequently with the little girl pulling the crossbow, shooting
the British chick in the leg, and yelling “I’m Katniss”.We all chuckled, because it was morbidly
humorous and wonderfully topical, considering the popularity of The Hunger Games.I actually preferred the slapstick humor of
Muppet guy jumping into a pile of snow and landing on a fire hydrant.But I digress.

Imagine my surprise when we get to that over-played moment
in the movie when the girl pulls the crossbow and yells, “I’m Pocahontas!”You heard me right, she didn’t say
Katniss.Why?What was the purpose of changing that?When did the change happen?Based on my rudimentary understanding of
copyright laws, etc., I don’t think there is an issue with using a fictional
character’s name in a movie.It happens
all the time, and we know they ran that commercial ad nausea without a cease
and desist order.So what happened?

My theory is this.The movie was shot with the Pocahontas scene.When it came time to promote it, the
marketing team said, “Hey, you know what’s hot right now?Hunger Games!Let’s have that brat kid yell Katniss in the preview.We’ll dub it in and sell lots more tickets.”

So, who has two thumbs and feels manipulated?*Imagine me with my two thumbs pointing at
myself.*

I’d like to say I’m furious and will be writing letters to
the studio promoting this movie until I receive satisfaction and a return of
the $1.29 I spent renting this deceptive movie.But, in this case, I still loved the movie.And I didn’t care what the kid said, the
point was that Muppet guy had been irresponsible and left the crossbow on the
kitchen table.That was the point of
that scene anyway.

‘Wow, this is a long and pointless rant as it relates to
books’ you’re rightfully thinking.But
it made me think about how books are marketed, and a big component of that is
the covers.You know, those things you
aren’t supposed to judge with but inevitably do.Two books came to mind.One that I feel misled me and one that I
think took strange artistic liberties that had no connection with the content
of the book.

Gone is a novel
about middle school kids who are left behind when something happens to all the
adults, blah, blah, blah, Lord of the
Flies.The cover showed young adults
– high school age for sure.The novel
was about twelve-year-olds, if I remember correctly.Anyway, big difference in how a story plays
out when you are expecting an older, more intense story.I just felt misled by the cover.Due to the age of the characters, everything
felt less serious and less intense.I kept
flipping back to the cover, thinking, ‘They can’t look like this.They too young!’

So on to my second example.The book Fallen has a picture
of a girl in a beautiful flowing dress on the cover.No, this isn’t why I bought it, but after
reading the book and being largely disappointed, I looked at the cover again
and realized nowhere in the story is the main character dressed anything like
that.It doesn’t fit any scene in the
story.So what was the thinking here?Obviously, a marketing team andfocus group session run amok!

So when is bending the truth, dimming the lights a little,
and twisting the facts a reasonable tactic to promote a story and when is it a
betrayal of the sacred trust between storyteller and audience?I think in the end, you’ll know by how you
react to it.I brushed off the Katniss
thing and recommended the movie to others.

I didn’t buy the sequel to Gone.

What do you think of marketing/false advertising?

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5 comments:

Really interesting thoughts. I think due to rushed publishing schedules that marketing departments sometimes begin to design book covers before they've read them. My understanding is the acquisitions editor "launches" them at a big marketing/PR meeting at a specific time and if the draft of the MS is not yet ready the cover designers might have to work solely off the editor's description for awhile.

I do think the best covers represent both the storyline and the tone of the book, but in the end a cover's job is to sell copies. I've seen a lot of angry posts over cover designs that change mid-trilogy, but that change is almost always market-driven. Also, depending on publisher and author clout, the author may have very little say about their cover or title.

While I don't have a problem with a bit of 'cover fraud' (that Fallen cover is one of my faves) I DO have a problem with 'jacket flap fraud.' Even though flap copy also exists to sell books, it is usually written by (or at least approved by) editor and author. If your flap promises me an epic battle to the death between dueling magicians, then I expect action and bloodshed, you know?

Thank you for a really interesting post and your honest thoughts on marketing and false advertising. The most important part of advertising a book is the cover and so having an image that doesn't connect to the story at all is something that is very wrong, and which should embody all the parts of the tale that one is going to read. I also don't think that it is particularly nice when a book is advertised to be released by a certain date, but then is unavaliable to actually buy until a few days later. It is certainly the book cover issue that would matter a lot to me (as a reader who does sometimes judge a story by its cover) and so if i found something that was not true to what was inside the pages then i would be most upset and disapointed.

I think most people who read a lot of books do often judge a book by its cover and I agree that it isn't right for a cover to not relate to the book at all. That would really bother me and I am glad I am not the only one.

Oh yeah, this is incredibly irritating for me when the cover of the book doesn't match the book AT ALL. It's one thing for an indie author on a low/zero budget with little experience to be a little off. But for big publishers, it's something else entirely. They have the budget to put just about whatever they want on a cover, yet they still continue to put whatever they think will make them money. In the long run, in my eyes, that only hurts them because it lowers my opinion of them and lowers the chance that I will spend whatever money I do have on one of their books.